Impact of a clinical pharmacist on provider prescribing patterns in a primary care clinic

Abstract

Background: Sodium-glucose transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors and glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonists have demonstrated beneficial outcomes in patients with type 2 diabetes at high cardiovascular risk. Unfortunately, these agents are still underutilized in primary care practice. A clinical pharmacist was embedded at a primary care clinic to provide diabetes and hypertension management under a collaborative practice agreement with a supervising physician.

Objectives: This study will evaluate whether the presence of an embedded pharmacist in a primary care clinic affects prescribing patterns of novel, evidence-based diabetes therapies.

Methods: We abstracted information on SGLT2 inhibitor and GLP-1 agonist prescribing patterns from 3 primary care clinics across 2 time periods as a single-center, retrospective cohort study. We used a difference-in-difference analysis to compare prescription rates and assess the impact of embedding the pharmacist into clinical practice. Prescriptions written by the pharmacist were excluded.

Results: Across all 3 clinics, 1309 and 1489 patients were included in the pre-intervention and postintervention periods, respectively. The percentage of patients prescribed either an SGLT2 inhibitor or GLP-1 agonist, similar between both groups at baseline, rose to 11.6% in the nonintervention clinics and 15.0% in the intervention clinic. There was a statistically significant increase in SGLT2 inhibitor and GLP-1 agonist prescribing in the intervention clinic compared with nonintervention clinics (P = 0.034). This change in prescribing patterns appeared even greater when excluding prescribers who were not present during both pre-intervention and postintervention periods (P = 0.009).

Conclusion: The presence of a pharmacist is associated with increased SGLT2 inhibitor and GLP-1 agonist prescribing within a clinic, even in patients not seen directly by the pharmacist. These results suggest that an on-site clinical pharmacist providing care for patients with diabetes may indirectly influence the prescribing behavior of co-located primary care providers, increasing the adoption of novel noninsulin diabetic medications.